Word of God?

Yes, my friends, the Bible has great social, cultural, and religious importance. It is an incomparable, paradigmatic artifact of the human spirit. It is best understood religiously as a metaphoric record of the deeds of God and the piety of the people of God. But it is not literally the Word of God. It is a collection of the words of many ancient authors about God, among other things.

The Bible should not always be interpreted literally. In fact, it is most often not to be. It consists of the religious expressions of ancient people who spoke languages now long forgotten, and who were not of our world time, our culture, or our society. It is foolish to believe that their holy scriptures must apply directly to us in our contemporary context.

God gave us minds, and hearts, and consciences in order for us to work things out ethically and theologically for ourselves, not for us to rely, near-sighted, wearing shades and blinders, on literal readings in translation of archaic and unchangeable textual artifacts.

For liturgical purposes, sincere believers may name The Bible, metaphorically, as the Word of God. But God does not actually speak in words. God does not speak at all, actually. God needs people for that, and people have done their job to the best of their abilities. God needs people, reading the signs of their times, to create new symbols, metaphors, parables, psalms, and sermons, informed by the Biblical tradition, but reinterpreted and recontextualized, so as to bring the kerygma of the early Christian Jesus movement, and the good news of God home to our diverse, sectarian, secularized twenty-first century people.

If the Bible, then, is a merely human testament to an ancient era of religious experience, why do I continue to read, study, interpret, quote, and preach it? A one word answer is sufficient – Tradition! Tradition is the way that human societies accumulate, appreciate, and assimilate the wisdom and experience of their forebears. I place high value in the venerable religious traditions, and persistent philosophies of humankind.

Like all persons who have lived before us, we do not apply our human faculties to contemporary realities in isolation from our cultural precursors. We are swimmers in a great and ever-flowing stream of tradition that has largely formed us, to which we belong, and which belongs to us. The Bible’s recollections are the primary sources of our religious traditions.

Along with more than one-third of the world’s people, I stand in the vast and interflowing delta of the broad river of Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Truly indeed we are, historically and culturally, people of the Book. But that is not all we are. We are children of the living God, and, as my confreres in the United Church of Christ love to say, in rich metaphor, God is still speaking.